Gun controls may reduce 90 percent of gun-related deaths

Certain gun controls could lead to a 90 percent decrement of gun-related deaths in the country, says a study published Thursday in The Lancet. It analyzed 25 different gun laws and compared the results with the data on gun deaths, provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The team of researchers wanted to investigate if restrictive gun laws can effectively reduce gun deaths and determine what would happen if one or two laws to restrict guns usage are implemented at a federal level, said lead author Bindu Kalesan from Boston University to reporters at the Monitor.

Photo: The Huffington Post.

Results from the study would appear to show that nine of the 25 laws analyzed are effective at reducing gun deaths while the other 16 are ineffective or inconclusive. Specifically, background checks for purchasing guns, background checks for purchasing ammunition, and firearm identification are the controls that obtain the best results.

After using predictive models, researchers concluded that if these three laws are implemented nationwide, there would be a great decrement of gun-related attacks.

Changes will not come immediately if the three laws are applied, however, the country would begin to see great results in the long term if the implementation is taken seriously, said co-author Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University to the Christian Science Monitor.

Findings are not conclusive, but they provide interesting data for new investigations. According to David Hemenway of Harvard School of Public Health, researchers did not consider important factors such as poverty, alcohol consumption, urbanicity and mental health.

“We wanted to see which restrictive gun laws really work, as opposed to saying ‘restrictive laws work,’ and figure out if we are pushing for a law which might not work,” said the lead author of the study Bindu Kalesan, assistant professor of medicine at Boston University, according to CNN.

Gun Violence Archive 2016

Researchers will conduct more investigations to study individual laws, particularly the three that appear to be effective, in order to determine which of them could have the greatest impact.

In 2016, there were 45 reported and verified mass shootings in the country. According to the non-profit corporation Gun Violence Archive, there were 9,360 incidents during 2016, which left 2,367 people dead and 4,757 people injured. 102 of the killed/injured people were children age 0-11, and 523 were teens age 12-17.